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Some distance in front of their position, a long hedge and ditch divided the upland, on which the "battles" of Warwick and Salisbury were stationed, from the fields in which the French were arrayed. At its upper end, remote from the Miausson, where Salisbury's command lay, the hedge was broken by a gap through which a farmer's track connected the fields on each side of it.
His remote position threw the brunt of the fighting upon the divisions of Warwick and Salisbury. They were stationed side by side in advance of him on ground lower than that held by him, but higher than that of the enemy, and beset with bushes and vineyards which sloped down on the left towards the marshes of the Miausson.
My reasons for my account of the battle of Poitiers demand longer explanation than can be given in a footnote. Like most modern writers, I have based my narrative on the Chronicle of Geoffrey le Baker as expounded by Sir E.M. Thompson, though I agree with Professor Oman in holding that Baker's "ampla profundaque vallis et mariscus, torrente quodam irriguus," must be the valley of the Miausson.
The English army spent the night before the battle beyond the Miausson, but in the morning the prince, fearing an ambuscade behind the hill of Nouaillé on the east bank, abandoned his original position and crossed the stream in order to occupy it.
On the west the place of combat was skirted by the little river Miausson, which winds its way through marshes in a deep-cut valley, girt by wooded hills. The French left their horses at Poitiers, having resolved, perhaps on the advice of a Scottish knight, Sir William Douglas, to fight on foot, after the English and Scottish fashion, and as they had already fought at Mauron and elsewhere.
Their complete armour made riders and steeds alike impervious to the English arrows, until the prince, seeing from his hill how things were proceeding, ordered some archers to station themselves on the marshy ground near the Miausson, in advance of the left flank of the English army.
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